It is bigger than all but three (only ExxonMobil, BP and Shell are
larger). It is facing the largest potential corporate liability in
history ($27 billion) for causing the world's largest oil spill in the
Ecuadorian rainforest. It is the only major U.S. Corporation still
operating in Burma and, with its partner Total Oil Corp., is the single
largest financial contributor to the Burmese government. It is the
dominant private oil producer in both Angola and Kazakhstan, with
operations in both countries mired in human rights and environmental
abuses. It is the only major oil company to be tried in a U.S. court on
charges of mass human rights abuse, including summary execution and
torture (for its operations in Nigeria).

It is the only oil company to hire one of the Bush Administration's
"torture memo" lawyers (William J. Haynes). It is the largest and most
powerful corporation in California, where it is currently being sued
for conspiring to fix gasoline prices. It has led the fight to keep
California as the only major oil producing state that does not tax oil
when it is pumped from the ground, thereby denying the state an extra
$1.5 billion annually. It is the largest industrial polluter in the Bay
Area and is among the largest single corporate contributors to climate
change on the planet.

Chevron is also the focus of one of the world's most unique and well-organized corporate resistance campaigns.

That campaign got a jolt of energy when Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum came
to San Francisco on Halloween weekend for a special screening of The Yes Men Fix the World.

Global Exchange and I teamed up with Andy (the movie's co-writer,
director, and producer) and a host of the Bay Areas most creative
activists, to lead an entire movie audience out of the theater, into
the streets, and in protest of Chevron.

We spread the word early, far, and wide: The Yes Men are coming! The
Yes Men are coming! They will not only fix the world, they will fix
Chevron too!

Larry Bogad, a Yes Man co-hort and professor of Guerilla Theater,
helped concoct a masterful street theater scenario. A crack team of
protest and street theater organizers was compiled, including David
Solnit of the Mobilization for Climate Justice and Rae Abileah of Code Pink. Rock The Bike signed on and the word kept spreading.

On Sunday, the Roxie Theater in San Francisco's Mission District was
filled beyond capacity with an audience that came ready to protest.
They laughed, clapped, booed, and cheered along with the film. When the
movie ended, Andy answered questions, I talked about Chevron, and Larry
laid out the protest scenario.

Three Chevron executives, protected from the early ravages of climate change in SurvivaBalls,
were dragged up the street by dozens of Chevron minions with nothing
but haz-mat suits to protect them. Those unable to afford any
protection (i.e. The Dead) followed close behind. Next came resistance:
the Chevron street sweepers, actively cleaning up Chevron's messes who
were followed by the protesters, ready to change the story.

We didn't have a permit, but we took a lane of traffic on 16th
street anyway. The police first tried to intervene, then they "joined
in," blocking traffic on our way to Market and Castro.

As we marched and the music blared, people literally came out of
their houses and off of the streets to join in. Passersby eagerly took
postcards detailing Chevron's corporate crimes.

Once we arrived at the gas station, I welcomed everyone and
explained that we were at an independent Chevron (as opposed to
corporate) station, whose owner (whom I'd been speaking with regularly)
had his own list of grievances with his corporate boss. The particular
station was not our target of protest, but rather, the Chevron
Corporation itself.

Larry and Andy than led the entire crowd in a series of Tableaux
Morts. The Chevron executives in their SurvivaBalls drained the
lifeblood from the masses. The people began to rebel, forcing the
SurvivaBalls into the "turtle" position to fend off the attacks.
Ultimately, the separate groups saw their common purpose in resisting
Chevron's abuses. The dead rose, the Chevron minions rebelled, and the
sweepers and protesters joined together. They all chased the Chevron
executives off into the distance, and then danced in the streets,
rejoicing in their shared victory!

The Chevron Program
I direct at Global Exchange seeks to unite Chevron affected communities
across the United States and around the world. By uniting these
communities, we build strength from each other, and become a movement.
By expanding, strengthening, and highlighting this movement, we bring
in more allies and create a powerful advocacy base for real policy
change. Those changes will reign in Chevron, and by extension, the
entire oil industry. And, by raising the voices of those hardest hit by
the true cost of oil and exposing how we all ultimately pay the price,
we help move the world more rapidly away from oil as an energy resource
altogether.

“I was tortured and imprisoned by the Nigerian military for my
peaceful protests against Shell Oil’s destruction of our land,” Suanu
Kingston Bere, a Nigerian activist who spoke at the Berkeley City
Council meeting, said in JINN’s news release. “I believe the City’s
support sends a strong message that communities in the U.S are
concerned about the human rights abuses and environmental damage
associated with oil extraction. I do not want to see my people continue
to go through what I went through.”

Berkeley’s resolution also calls on the State Department to support
third-party peace talks in the Delta to address environmental
destruction and lack of investment in the oil producing region. The
resolution was co-sponsored by Councilmembers Jesse Arreguin, Darryl Moore and Max Anderson and was introduced to the council through the Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission, which worked with JINN to draft it.

JINN says 50 years of oil exploitation in the Niger Delta has
produced over $700 billion in oil revenues shared between the Nigerian
government and oil giants like San Ramon-based Chevron as well as Exxon Mobil and Shell.
More than 40 percent of Nigeria’s oil is exported to the U.S. Yet
despite the corporate oil wealth, local residents’ quality of life has
deteriorated – their drinking polluted, their food fisheries poisoned,
their access to education, health care and even electricity limited.

“Oil companies in Nigeria have had long a relationship with the
notoriously corrupt and historically brutal Nigerian government where
rampant corruption, fraudulent elections and violent suppression of
peaceful protests are the norm in the Delta,” Nigerian writer and
activist Omoyele Sowore said in JINN’s news release. “The proposed ESTT
Act in the Senate is an important step toward holding oil companies
accountable for their collusion with the Nigerian government, which
protects their profits while killing and injuring innocent local people
and destroying the Delta’s fragile environment.”

These days just about every large corporation would have us believe
that it is in the vanguard of the fight to reverse global warming.
Companies mount expensive ad campaigns to brag about raising their
energy efficiency and shrinking their carbon footprint.

Yet a bold article in the latest issue of business-friendly Bloomberg Markets
magazine documents how some large U.S.-based transnationals are
complicit in a process that does more to exacerbate the climate crisis
than anything else: the ongoing destruction of the Amazon rain forest.

While deforestation is usually blamed on local ranchers and loggers, Bloomberg
points the finger at companies such as Alcoa and Cargill, which the
magazine charges have used their power to get authorities in Brazil to
approve large projects that violate the spirit of the country’s
environmental regulations.

Alcoa is constructing a huge bauxite mine that will chew up more
than 25,000 acres of virgin jungle in an area, the magazine says, “is
supposed to be preserved unharmed forever for local residents.” Bloomberg
cites Brazilian prosecutors who have been waging a four-year legal
battle against an Alcoa subsidiary that is said to have circumvented
the country’s national policies by obtaining a state rather than a
federal permit for the project.

Bloomberg also focuses on the widely criticized grain port
that Cargill built on the Amazon River. Cargill claims to be
discouraging deforestation by the farmers supplying the soybeans that
pass through the port, but the Brazilian prosecutors interviewed by Bloomberg expressed skepticism that the effort was having much effect.

Apart from the big on-site projects, Bloomberg looks at
major corporations that it says purchase beef and leather from
Amazonian ranchers who engage in illegal deforestation. Citing
Brazilian export records, the magazine identifies Wal-Mart, McDonald’s,
Kraft Foods and Carrefour as purchasers of the beef and General Motors,
Ford and Mercedes-Benz as purchasers of leather.

The impact of the Amazon cattle ranchers was also the focus of a Greenpeace report published in June. That report put heat on major shoe companies that are using leather produced by those ranchers.

Nike and Timberland
responded to the study by pledging to end their use of leather hides
from deforested areas in the Amazon basin. Greenpeace is trying to get
other shoe companies to follow suit.

Think of the Amazon the next time a company such as Wal-Mart tells
us what wonderful things it is doing to address the climate crisis.

Schlosser
explains that while many of Chipotle's efforts are great, he
nonetheless "cares more about human rights than any of those things."
He continues: "If Taco Bell, Subway, Burger King, and McDonald’s can
reach agreement with the CIW, I don’t see why Chipotle can’t."

Kenner
likewise, the article states, "made clear that he disagreed with the
company’s position on the CIW" even if he agrees with other things
Chipotle is doing. Kenner explains: "I was hopeful that by associating
itself with a film that promotes workers’ rights, [Chipotle] might be
inclined to sign with the Coalition . . . And now I’m not confident
they will.”

Our cameo
in this unfolding fiasco is also noted: "Chipotle clearly resents such
critical statements at events designed to demonstrate its
sustainability cred. At one of its screenings in Denver, Chipotle
employees barred people
from the Campaign for Fair Food to speak after the
screening—overturning an arrangement that had been made with Food,
Inc’s public-education campaign. " After investigating the incident,
the article decides: "In other words, people wanting to discuss the CIW
issue aren’t to be given stage time at the Chipotle-sponsored Food,
Inc. screenings."

Of
course Denver wasn't the only city where Chipotle got heat from Fair
Food activists while trying to bask in Food, Inc.'s glory. All over the
country allies of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers took to the movies to deflate Chipotle's hot air about "food with integrity" with some sharp truths about farm labor in Chipotle's supply chain. See the great photo report from the nationwide "Battle of the Burrito" on the CIW website.

References to this PR fiasco are popping up in unforseen places such as thedailygreen or even more surprising the mainstream investor blog The Motely Fool. And the bed which Chipotle made for itself in which it now must lie can't be feeling any more comfortable.

The lesson for Chipotle to learn from its bungled Food, Inc. PR experiment? The ecorazzi blog has these fitting words: "you can’t have your 1000+ calorie burrito and eat it too."

After thirteen years and
countless hours by lawyers, community members, and activists around the
world, Royal Dutch Shell finally settled the Wiwa v Shell case in a New York court for $15.5 million.

Plaintiffs in the case, which included Ken Saro-Wiwa Jr., and the
families of other Ogoni men hanged in November 1995, charged the
Royal Dutch/Shell company, its Nigerian subsidiary, and the former
chief of its Nigerian operation, Brian Anderson, with complicity in the
torture, killing, and other abuses of Ogoni leader Ken Saro-Wiwa and
other non-violent Nigerian activists in the mid-1990s in the Ogoni
region of the Niger Delta.

Shell says
they settled the case as a "humanitarian gesture" to the Ogoni. Does
anyone really believe that after fighting for more than a decade to
keep this out of court, Shell suddenly woke up and felt great
compassion for the Ogoni? Please.

Shell settled because they were scared, and they knew the evidence
against them was overwhelming. They publicly say they had nothing to do
with the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the other Ogoni, and yet there
were documents and video that they fought hard to keep out of the public eye.

Evidence that was to be introduced in the case included an internal Shell memo
where the head of Shell Nigeria offered to intervene on Saro-Wiwa's
behalf, if only Saro-Wiwa and others would stop claiming that Shell had
made payments to the military.

Witness were set to testify that they saw Shell vehicles
transporting Nigerian soldiers, that they saw Shell employees
conferring with the military, that they saw money being exchanged
between Shell employees and military officers, and that they heard
military officers, including the brutal Major Okuntimo of the Rivers
State Internal Security Task Force, make admissions regarding the work
they were doing on behalf of Shell.

We have known some of Shell's involvement in this tragedy for a long
time. In early May of 1994, Ken Saro-Wiwa Sr. faxed me a memo authored
by Major Okuntimo which read "Shell operations still impossible unless ruthless military operations are undertaken for smooth economic activities to commence" and further called for "pressure on oil companies for prompt regular inputs."

I received that fax and immediately called Ken. He said "this is it.
They're going to kill us all. All for Shell." It was the last time I
talked with him. Several weeks later he was arrested on the trumped up
charges for which he was ultimately hanged.

In the last day, lots of people have asked me if $15.5 million is
enough to compensate for the hanging of nine men, the death of
thousands more, and for the destruction of an ecosystem. No of course
not. But was it on par with what a jury would have awarded in this
case? Yes, lawyers tell me, for sure.

More importantly, does the settlement bring relief to Ken Wiwa Jr.
and the families of the other men who were executed? If you read Ken's thoughtful and moving piece in the Guardian, the answer is clearly yes. That alone should be cause for celebration.

Ken Sr.'s famous last words from the gallows were "lord take my soul
but the struggle continues." In this moment, perhaps more than ever
before, we need to heed that call to action. The settlement in this
case brings satisfaction to the plaintiffs for an event that happened
14 years ago. It in no way, shape or form excuses or absolves Shell of
their ongoing destruction of the Niger Delta environment.

One of the central complaints of Niger Delta communities for forty
years has been gas flaring, which sends plumes of toxic pollutants into
the air and water of the Niger Delta. Gas flaring endangers human
health, harms local ecosystems, emits huge amounts of greenhouse gases,
wastes vast quantities of natural gas, and is against Nigerian law.
Shell does it nowhere else in the world in volumes that are even
remotely comparable to what they flare in the Delta.

But Shell is still flaring gas in Nigeria.

While there is no doubt that the settlement represented a
significant victory for the plaintiffs' in this one human rights case
against Shell, true justice will not be served as long as the people of
Nigeria continue to suffer the terrible impact of Shell's operations.
Shell estimates it would cost about $3 billion -- only 10% of just
their last year's profits -- to end Shell's gas flaring in Nigeria once
and for all.

But instead of putting their great "humanitarian concern" into
action, Shell points the finger at the Nigerian government and demands
that they pay to end this practice.
Send a message to Shell's CEO
Jeroen van der Veer, and let him know that if he really wants to prove
his great concern for the Ogoni people, he'll end gas flaring once and
for all.

When people with strong ideological perspectives are often outraged
by media coverage of their pet issues. When both sides are mad, you
know you're doing something right. But how often do you hear
corporations furious about they way they are covered in the business
section? The section seems to lend itself to favor-currying and
soft-shoeing.

In the lead-up to Chevron's annual shareholders meeting tomorrow in San Ramon, the company landed a puff piece on KGO focusing on its efforts to decrease its water usage. No mention of the Amazon controversy, and no mention of outside pressure on Chevron, EBMUD's largest water user.

I'm disappointed to say that a Chronicleinterview
with the company's top lawyer also softballs the issues, while giving
Chevron the opportunity to present its side of the story with no
opportunity for response from the company's many critics. [Update: Chron editors tell me there will be more coverage of Chevron later in the week.]

Well, Chevron's opponents, including San Francisco's Amazon Watch, have taken matters into their own hands, releasing an alternate annual report that presents the externalities
not listed in the company's balance sheet, which shows a record profit
of $24 billion, making the company the second most profitable in the
United States.

Did you know that Chevron's Richmond refinery was built in 1902 and emitted 100,000 pounds of toxic waste in 2007, consisting of no less than 38 toxic substances? The EPA ranks it as one of the worst refineries
in the nation. With 17,000 people living within 3 miles from the plant,
you'd think the San Ramon-based company would take local heat from more
than just a couple dozen activists.

Chevron has sought to brand itself an "energy" company, one eagerly pursuing alternatives to petroleum. Its aggressive "Will You Join Us?"
ad campaign asked regular folks to reduce their energy consumption,
suggesting that Chevron was doing the same. In actuality, the company
spent less than 3 percent of its whopping capital and
exploratory expenditures on alternative energy. And it has refused to
offer better reporting on its greenhouse gas emissions, despite strong
shareholder support for it. (The aggressive, and misleading, ad
campaign seems to have ired the report's researchers as well: The
report is decorated by numerous parodies, and some have been
wheat-pasted around town.)

It's a very well researched report, written by the scholar Antonia Juhasz,
clearly divided into regional issues, and it's a much needed
counterbalance to the friendly coverage Chevron is otherwise getting.
(Juhasz was interviewed on Democracy Now this morning.)

For information on protesting the shareholder meeting early tomorrow morning, click here.

Posted by Laura Carlsen on April 3rd, 2009Americas Policy Program, Center for International Policy

At the end of
March, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) celebrated its 50th
anniversary in Medellin. The occasion presents an opportunity to revise
concepts and move toward a fairer development model. It is logical to
think that among the festivities, a process of evaluation and
self-critique would begin regarding the bank's actions and work in the
region.

The circumstances demand it. The continent has been plunged into a
grave economic crisis, in part because of the string of structural
reforms, deregulation, foreign market dependence, and privatization
that the IDB has supported in the region. Limits on the use of
non-renewable fuels have become more and more obvious while climate
change threatens to affect the production of basic foods and increase
the frequency of natural disasters. Forced migration characterizes
modern life and growing inequality has become the most important
challenge faced by all the countries in the region.

Medellin: site of the 50th anniversary of the IDB. Photo: www.skyscraperlife.com.

In spite of this gray outlook, it seemed that until now everything
suggested that the IDB would prescribe more of the same medicine. They
predicted an increase in loans to the region for the record figure of
US$18 billion for 2009 as a response to the crisis. This will generate
a new wave of debt in the recipient countries, while at the same time
the development model behind the loans faces a crisis of credibility
due to its dubious results. For the IDB, development is seen as a
process of ensuring the transnational mobility of capital, enabling
foreign investment, the transfer of goods, and access to natural
resources. In recent years, this model has been imposed on regions that
were previously closed off due to their geographical location or
because of little interest from big business. Now that the value of
natural resources is increasing and national economies have opted for
exports, mega-projects including transportation infrastructure and
hydroelectric power plants, among others, have become attractive again.
They generally target regions with a low population density, and, in
many cases, significant indigenous populations. While these communities
are often forgotten by their national governments and suffer high
levels of marginalization, at the same time their territories are rich
in both culture and biodiversity.

The IDB has been a major promoter of infrastructure mega-projects
designed to drive this vision. Two mega-project master plans have been
of particular interest to the IDB: The Plan Puebla-Panama (also known
as the Mesoamerican Integration and Development Project) and the
Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South
America (IIRSA). These plans include the construction of
super-highways, dams, electricity networks, and more. The projects
signal a drastic change in the use of land and resources. Local,
regional, and national markets—which generate more jobs and constitute
the majority of food distribution—are seen as a hindrance, and natural
resources—conserved by indigenous communities—are considered the spoils
of transnational business.

Among its objectives, the IDB aims to generate development in these
regions. However, a recent study revealed that the mega-projects
financed by the IDB in many cases end up displacing thousands of people
who are supposed to be the beneficiaries. The construction of dams is
the clearest example because it entails the involuntary displacement
through the flooding of vast areas which often include pre-existing
communities. One example is the La Parota hydroelectric dam in
Guerrero, Mexico which would displace around 25,000 people and has
currently been halted due to popular resistance. A group of 43
grassroots organizations met prior to the IDB meeting in Medellin. They
presented studies and testimonies on the impacts of these projects in
an effort to change the IDB's policies. Through the campaign known as
"The IDB: 50 years financing inequality," these groups argue that,
rather than alleviate the issue of poverty, mega-projects channel the
profits gained from natural resources into the hands of the private
sector and destroy the social fabric and community networks necessary
for indigenous survival.

The solution to poverty that the IDB fundamentally proposes would
seem to be: reduce poverty by expelling the poor. The two meetings—that
of the IDB authorities and that of the organizations which question its
practices—present an opportunity to revise the concept of development
and move toward a fairer development model.

For the past eight years, the oil giant formerly known as British
Petroleum has tried to convince the world that its initials stand for
“Beyond Petroleum.” An announcement just issued by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency may suggest that the real meaning of BP
is Brazen Polluter.

The EPA revealed
that BP Products North America will pay nearly $180 million to settle
charges that it has failed to comply with a 2001 consent decree under
which it was supposed to implement strict controls on benzene and
benzene-tainted waste generated by the company’s vast oil refining
complex in Texas City, Texas, located south of Houston. Since the
1920s, benzene has been known to cause cancer.

Among BP’s self-proclaimed corporate values
is to be “environmentally responsible with the aspiration of ‘no damage
to the environment’” and to ensure that “no one is subject to
unnecessary risk while working for the group.” Somehow, that message
did not seem to make its way to BP’s operation in Texas City, which has
a dismal performance record.

The benzene problem in Texas City was supposed to be addressed as part of the $650 million agreement
BP reached in January 2001 with the EPA and the Justice Department
covering eight refineries around the country. Yet environmental
officials in Texas later found that benzene emissions at the plant
remained high. BP refused to accept that finding and tried to stonewall
the state, which later imposed a fine of $225,000.

In March 2005 a huge explosion (photo) at the refinery killed 15
workers and injured more than 170. The blast blew a hole in a benzene
storage tank, contaminating the air so seriously that safety
investigators could not enter the site for a week after the incident.

BP was later cited for egregious safety violations and paid a record fine of $21.4 million. Subsequently, a blue-ribbon panel chaired by former secretary of state James Baker III found
that BP had failed to spend enough money on safety and failed to take
other steps that could have prevented the disaster in Texas City. Still
later, the company paid a $50 million fine as part of a plea agreement on related criminal charges.

In an apparent effort to repair its image, BP has tried to associate
itself with positive environmental initiatives. The company was, for
instance, one of the primary sponsors
of the big Good Jobs/Green Jobs conference held in Washington earlier
this month. Yet as long as BP operates dirty facilities such as the
Texas City refinery, the company’s sunburst logo, its purported
earth-friendly values and its claim of going beyond petroleum will be
nothing more than blatant greenwashing.

While the Norwegian Council of Ethics full recommendation mentions conflicts involving Barrick in Chile, Tanzania, and the Philippines, the panel acknowledged that, "due to limited resources," it restricted its investigation of Barrick to the Porgera mine in Papua New Guinea. The Porgera mine has been a prime target for criticism for its use of riverine tailings disposal, a practice banned in almost every country in the world.

"It's unbelievably embarrassing," admitted Green Party deputy leader Adriane Carr. "It's got to be bad news for Canada when a foreign government says it's going to sell its shares in a Canadian company they figure is unethical."

This isn't the first time that Norway's Fund has divested from a gold mining company. In fact, looking at a list, the fund – with the notable exception of Walmart – divests exclusively from mining (primarily gold mining) corporations and corporations that produce nuclear weapons or cluster munitions... an interesting juxtaposition highlighting the comparable nature of mining to the production of weapons of mass destruction, especially in terms of long-term environmental consequences.

Compare that to Canada's treatment of gold mining companies. Just this last December, Peter Munk, the chairman and founder of Barrick Gold, received the Order of Canada, Canada's highest civilian honor. Additionally, within Toronto he is honored as a philanthropist, with the Peter Munk Cardiac Center and the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto both adorning his name. Similarly, Ian Telfer, the chairman of Goldcorp, the world's second largest gold miner behind Barrick, has the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa bearing his name.

These symbolic gestures, along with the fact that several Canadian Pension funds and even Vancouver-based "Ethical Funds" are still heavily invested in Barrick Gold, show that Canada has a long way to go in demanding that its companies honor human rights and halt its colonial-style, exploitative economic regime. In fact, by its own admittance, Canada's Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade stated that "Canada does not yet have laws to ensure that the activities of
Canadian mining companies in developing countries conform to human
rights standards, including the rights of workers and of indigenous
peoples." Since the date of that landmark confession, Canada has yet to adopt any intervening structures (like an ombudsperson) or develop any mandatory regulations for Canadian companies operating abroad.

Gold mining produces an average of 79 tons of waste for every ounce of gold extracted, 50 percent of it is carried out on native lands, and about 80 percent of it is used for jewelry, according to the "No Dirty Gold" campaign, a project of Oxfam and Earthworks. It is no wonder that in a portfolio with plenty of human rights abuses, the Norwegian Pension Fund decided to concentrate on gold miners, cluster munition manufacturers and nuclear weapon producers first. It is time that the rest of the world catch up.

More than 800
representatives from organizations throughout the Americas made their
way to the northern city of La Esperanza, Honduras to take a strong
stand against the militarization of their nations and communities.
Following three days of workshops, the participants read their final
declaration in front of the gates of the U.S. Army Base at Palmerola,
Honduras, just hours from the conferencesite. The first demand on the list was to close down this and all U.S.
military bases in Latin America and the Caribbean. By the end of the
demonstration, the walls of the base sported hundreds of spray-painted
messages and demands that contrasted sharply with their prison-like
austerity.

Palmerola,
formally called the Soto Cano Air Base, brought back some very bad
memories among the hundreds of Central American participants. The U.S.
government installed the base in 1981 and used it to launch the illegal
contra operations against the Nicaraguan government. The base was also
used to airlift support to counterinsurgency operations in Guatemala and El Salvador and train U.S. forces
in counterinsurgency techniques during the dirty wars that left over
100,000 dead, and is now used as a base for the U.S.-sponsored "war on
drugs."

The demilitarization conference also called for an immediate halt to the recently launched "Merida Initiative,"
the Bush administration's new Trojan horse for remilitarization of the
region. The resolution asserts that the measure "expands U.S. military
intervention and contributes to the militarization of our countries"
and representatives from the Central American nations and Mexico
included in the military aid package committed to a process of
monitoring the funds and defeating further appropriations.

The Merida Initiative was announced by President Bush
as a "counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism, and border security"
cooperation initiative in October 2007. The model extends the Bush
administration's infamous national security strategy of 2002 to impose
it as the U.S.-led security model for the hemisphere. The approach
relies on huge defense contracts to U.S. corporations, and military and
police deployment to deal with issues ranging from drug trafficking to
illegal immigration and seeks to extend U.S. military hegemony in
foreign lands. It has been proven in Colombia
and other areas where it has been applied to have the effect of
increasing violence, failing to decrease drug flows, and leading to
extensive human rights violations.

Among the 14
resolutions of the conference, three others reject aspects of the
Initiative: the repeal of anti-terrorist laws that criminalize social
protest and are a direct result of U.S. pressure to impose the
disastrous Bush counter-terrorism paradigm; the demand to replace the
militarized "war on drugs" model with measures of citizen
participation, community heath, etc.; and the demand for full respect
for the rights of migrants.

Although on the
surface, Latin America is experiencing a period of relative calm after
the brutality of the military dictatorships and the dirty wars,
grassroots movement leaders from all over the continent described a
context of increasing aggression. The indigenous and farm organizations
that occupy territories coveted by transnational corporations have
become targets of forced displacement. Social movements that protest
privatization and free trade agreements have been dubbed terrorists and
attacked and imprisoned under new anti-terrorist laws that are a poor
legal facade for outright repression. The use of the military troops in
counter-narcotic activities has become commonplace and often hides
other agendas of the powerful. Police forces have come to deal with
youth as if being young itself were a crime.

In viewing the
threats of militarization in their societies, participants use a
broader definition than just the presence of army bases and troops.
"Militarism," states the Campaign for Demilitarization of the Americas,
is " the daily presence of the military logic in our society, in our
economic forms, in our social links, and in the logic of gender
domination and the supposed natural superiority of men over women."
Using this concept, the conference covered the profound need to change
the educational system and social norms, to work from within
communities, as well as making demands for changes in the external
conditions that affect them.

Despite days of
testimonies that sometimes included tears and anger, delegates to the
conference expressed hope above all else. Ecuador's new constitution
and decision to kick out the U.S. army base at Manta was cited as proof
of progress.

Both concrete
plans for action and an encouraging consensus emerged: the breadth of
the challenge can be overwhelming but the dream of lasting peace
provides an irresistible light at the end of the tunnel.

The declaration
concludes on this note: "... through these campaigns and actions on the
grassroots level, organized within each nation and throughout the
continent, we can reach a day not long from now when we fulfill the
dream of living free of violence, exclusion, and war."

How was it that these "intruders" had an estimated 3,000 - 4,000 people backing them up?

In what appears to be a spontaneous civilian movement against Barrick Gold, the world's largest gold miner, thousands of people invaded Barrick`s
North Mara Gold Mine this week in Tarime District and destroyed equipment worth
$15 million. Locals say that the uprising was sparked by the killing of a local, identified as Mang'weina Mwita Mang'weina. According to a Barrick Public Relations officer (as reported by the Tanzanian Guardian newspaper), "the intruders stoned the security personnel relentlessly until they
overpowered them. The guards abandoned their posts and retreated to
safety."

While
Barrick implies that "high levels of crime" are the cause of this
recent outbreak, recent reports suggest a different picture.

Allan Cedillo Lissner, a photojournalist who recently documented mine life near the North Mara mine, explains:

Ongoing conflict between the mine
and local communities has created a climate of fear for those who live
nearby. Since the mine opened in 2002, the Mwita family say that they
live in a state of constant anxiety because they have been repeatedly
harassed and intimidated by the mine's private security forces and by
government police. There have been several deadly confrontations in
the area and every time there are problems at the mine, the Mwita
family say their compound is the first place the police come looking.
During police operations the family scatters in fear to hide in the
bush, "like fugitives," for weeks at a time waiting for the situation
to calm down. They used to farm and raise livestock, "but now there are
no pastures because the mine has almost taken the whole land ... we
have no sources of income and we are living only through God's wishes.
... We had never experienced poverty before the mine came here." They
say they would like to be relocated, but the application process has
been complicated, and they feel the amount of compensation they have
been offered is "candy."

Evans Rubara, an investigative journalist from
Tanzania, blames this action on angry locals from the North Mara area
who are opposed to Barrick's presence there. "This comes one week after
Barrick threatened to leave the country based on claims that they
weren't making profit," comments Evans after explaining that Barrick
does not report profit to avoid taxes in the country. "This is a sign
to both the government of Tanzania and the International community
(especially Canada) that poor and marginalized people also get tired of
oppression, and that they would like Barrick to leave."

Only one week prior, Barrick's African Region Vice President, Gareth Taylor threatened
to leave Tanzania due to high operating costs, claiming that the company did not make profits there. Barrick's Toronto office
quickly denied this report, stating that "the company will work with
the government to ensure
the country's legislation remains 'competitive with other
jurisdictions so that Tanzanians can continue to benefit from
mining.'"

Interestingly, Taylors threat came shortly after he attended a workshop to launch the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) in Dar es Salaam.

One thing is clear, though; these reports of hundreds, backed by thousands, of villagers attacking mine infrastructure reflects a resentment that goes beyond mere criminal
action. And this surge in violence should be examined in the context of
the on-going exploitation and repressive environment surrounding the
mine.

Back in the good old days of the Cold War, everybody’s favorite secret agent, James Bond, fought villains like Dr. No, an evil scientist out to sabotage U.S. missile tests, and Mr. Big, a Soviet agent using pirate treasure to finance espionage in America. But as Bond’s friend Mathis tells him in Quantum of Solace, released this month, “When one is young, it’s easy to tell the difference between right and wrong. As one gets older, the villains and heroes get all mixed up.”

The reference is to a shady new Bond villain, agent of the Quantum organization – one Dominic Greene. In public, Greene is a leading environmentalist whose organization, Greene Planet, buys up large tracts of land for ecological preserves. But behind the scenes, Greene has another agenda. As he says to his co-conspirators, “This is the most valuable resource in the world and we need to control as much of it as we can.”

The film makes a number of plays on the assumption that the resource in question is oil – but oil is so…twentieth century.

By the time Bond has pursued Greene from Italy to Haiti, from Haiti to Austria, and crash-landed his plane in a sinkhole in the high, barren desert of Bolivia, we make the discovery that this vital resource is – surprise! – water.

Colluding with Greene is a cast of evil characters taken straight from the history books. We have General Medrano, the ex-dictator of Bolivia, to whom Greene says, “You want your country back? My organization can give it to you.” We have the U.S. Ambassador, myopically sticking to the familiar program: “Okay, we do nothing to stop a coup, and you give us a lease to any oil you find.” And we have the British foreign office, continually wrangling with M15, Bond’s spy agency. When Bond’s boss, M, tells him that Greene is not an environmentalist but a villain, the Foreign Minister says, “If we refused to do business with villains, we’d have almost no one to trade with.” Ain’t it the truth.

The fact that Quantum of Solace makes water the villain’s object of greed, replacing oil, gold, diamonds, and mutually assured destruction, is telling of the point we’ve reached. More telling still is the fact that our villain’s cover has him acting as an environmentalist, the ultimate corporate greenwasher. The fact that the action winds up in Bolivia – the country where, in real life, both Bechtel and Suez have tried and failed to take control of community water resources during and shortly after the reign of former-dictator-turned-neoliberal President Hugo Banzer – brings the plot frighteningly close to reality. The privatization of water in Bolivia back in 2000, and the massive popular response that turned out rural water stewards and urban ratepayers to riot for months until the multinational transgressor was ousted, was the spark that set social movements worldwide on red alert. Since then, numerous private water companies have been refused contracts on the grounds that popular movements, and, increasingly, governments, recognize the need to treat water as a human right and a public good – not a commodity.

If only the water movement had a few organizers with the physique, the gadgets, and the, er, style of Bond.

While we have many great documentaries telling the story of the global water wars, including this year’s Flow and Blue Gold, one is forced to wonder if 007 does a greater service to the water movement than even our most highly talented documentarians. After all, who better than Hollywood to characterize the greenwashing corporate water profiteers as straight up evil, sans the need to justify the hyperbole?

Matieu Amalric, the actor who played Dominic Greene, wanted to wear make-up for the role, but director Marc Forster “wanted Greene not to look grotesque, but to symbolize the hidden evils in society.” Similarly, the original screenplay had Greene having some “hidden power.” But in the final cut, the director seems to have decided that corporate power was power enough.

One wonders if Dominic Greene – had he not died drinking motor oil to quench his thirst in the Bolivian desert – might give the keynote speech at the upcoming World Water Forum in Istanbul (WWF). After all, the World Water Council (WWC) that puts on the forum is presided over by Loïc Fauchon, a former executive at one of the French subsidiaries of Suez, the world’s largest private water corporation.

As we learn from the WWF website, “One of the benefits of joining the WWC is the Council's ability to influence decisions related to world water management that affect organizations, business, and communities.” Perhaps their secret meetings will also be attended by executives of the Worldwide Fund for Nature, whose recent partnership with Coca-Cola aims to help the global soft-drink giant become “the most efficient company in the world in terms of water use,” with “every drop of water it uses…returned to the earth or compensated for through conservation and recycling programs.” And, with this blending of fact and fiction, it would hardly be surprising to find Greene’s signature on the CEO Water Mandate, which has companies with such devastating environmental track records as Dow Chemical, Shell Oil, Unilever, and Nestlé pledging to “help address the water challenge faced by the world today.”

When M, Bond’s overweening boss at M15, finds out about Quantum, she demands, “What the hell is this organization, Bond? How can they be everywhere and we know nothing about them?”

Well, my darling M, the answer is simple: like transnational corporations, and like the large NGO’s that work with the private sector to reform its practices and green its reputation, and like the International Finance Institutions whose interests are increasingly endangering the United Nations’ mandate to defend and protect human rights, they can be everywhere because their particular form of villainy works best when hidden in plain sight.

Thankfully, the world’s water is safe, because, behind the scenes, secret agent 007 is on the job.

The recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to slash the damage
award in the Exxon Valdez oil spill case and the indictment of Sen. Ted
Stevens on corruption charges are not the only controversies roiling
Alaska these days. The Last Frontier is also witnessing a dispute over
a proposal to open a giant copper and gold mine by Bristol Bay, the
headwaters of the world’s largest wild sockeye salmon fishery. Given
the popularity of salmon among the health-conscious, even non-Alaskans
may want to pay attention to the issue.

The Pebble mine project
has been developed by Vancouver-based Northern Dynasty Ltd., but the
real work would be carried out by its joint venture partner Anglo
American PLC, one of the world’s largest mining companies. Concerned
about the project and unfamiliar with Anglo American, two Alaska
organizations—the Renewable Resources Coalition
and Nunamta Aulukestai (Caretakers of the Land)—commissioned a
background report on the company, which has just been released and is
available for download on a website called Eye on Pebble Mine (or at this direct PDF link). I wrote the report as a freelance project.

Anglo American—which is best known as the company that long
dominated gold mining in apartheid South Africa as well as diamond
mining/marketing through its affiliate DeBeers—has assured Alaskans it
will take care to protect the environment and otherwise act responsibly
in the course of constructing and operating the Pebble mine. The
purpose of the report is to put that promise in the context of the
company’s track record in mining operations elsewhere in the world.

The report concludes that Alaskans have reason to be concerned about
Anglo American. Reviewing the company’s own worldwide operations and
those of its spinoff AngloGold in the sectors most relevant to the
Pebble project—gold, base metals and platinum—the report finds a
troubling series of problems in three areas: adverse environmental
impacts, allegations of human rights abuses and a high level of
workplace accidents and fatalities.

The environmental problems include numerous spills and accidental
discharges at Anglo American’s platinum operations in South Africa and
AngloGold’s mines in Ghana. Waterway degradation occurred at Anglo
American’s Lisheen lead and zinc mine in Ireland, while children living
near the company’s Black Mountain zinc/lead/copper mine in South Africa
were found to be struggling in school because of elevated levels of
lead in their blood.

The main human rights controversies have taken place in Ghana, where
subsistence farmers have been displaced by AngloGold’s operations and
have not been given new land, and in the Limpopo area of South Africa,
where villagers were similarly displaced by Anglo American’s platinum
operations.

High levels of fatalities in the mines of Anglo American and
AngloGold—more than 200 in the last five years—have become a major
scandal in South Africa, where miners staged a national strike over the
issue late last year.

Overall, the report finds that Anglo American’s claims of social
responsibility appear to be more rhetoric than reality. Salmon eaters
beware.

I was one of a group including a translator, Marwan Mawiri, who worked for
a year and ½ for Titan, now an L-3 subsidiary, in
Iraq. Marwan has witnessed first-hand numerous problems with the way
interrogation and translation contracting is being handled in Iraq – a
practice that may be putting at substantial risk the national security and
lives of the Iraqi people, of U.S. and multinational troops, officials
and contractors, and of the United States itself.

The problem is clear: inadequate and downright bad vetting and hiring practices for analysts, interrogators and linguists. Indeed, the U.S. military has recently cancelled Titan’s translation contract due to poor practices along with waste, fraud and abuse.

What is also crystal clear is that the war in Iraq can neither be won,
effectively prosecuted, nor competently withdrawn from until these
problems are solved and until proper oversight is in place.

If people hired to translate in critical battlefield and other situations
are not even fluent in at least Arabic and English; if screeners
monitoring the entry and exit of people to U.S. military bases at times
have no more qualification and training than having been a baggage
screener at a U.S. airline (see CorpWatch’s new report [note: updated December 2008] "Outsourcing Intelligence in Iraq":); if
interrogators are not qualified, experienced and trained to the highest
standards possible, how can we ensure that we avoid future travesties due
to bad intelligence? Such as the bad intelligence around the supposed
Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program (which was, of course, Bush/Cheney and neocon-driven, not L-3-driven), that got the U.S. into this war
in the first place? (And remember, even when U.S. soldiers start coming
home from Iraq, large numbers of private contractors will stay, making proper
oversight all the more crucial.)

It turned out that L-3’s management wasn’t so happy to see us, and that my co-worker, Pratap Chatterjee and I, were supposed to have received a
certain admission ticket to attend the meeting. The same went for our companions from the Iraq Campaign 2008 – a major coalition to oppose the war, which is now taking on private military contractors as part of their broader campaign on the high cost U.S. taxpayers are paying for the war in Iraq – and Foreign Policy in Focus, who were holding proxies. Funny that.

Looking out at the Statue of Liberty from the hotel lobby downstairs, where we gathered to figure out how to proceed, I pondered the damage this
war has done to the liberties of so many Iraqi people, and to so many
U.S. liberties and values that I hold dear. Like respect for human
rights, compliance with the Geneva Conventions around torture, appropriate
security that is handled with skill and integrity. I wasn’t surprised that
L-3/Titan didn’t want to hear our message; though I sincerely hope some of the shareholders, managers, directors, staff and financial analysts do
take the time to read our report and to talk to current and former contractors like Marwan. We didn’t go in malice.

We went in genuine concern over business operations that, while they may
be earning a pretty profit for large shareholders, pose a genuine
reputational risk to the company for future liability. And are causing harm on the ground, to real people. We challenge L-3 Communications
to become a truly ethical leader in business
practices, not just in products and sales. Surely the sixth-largest U.S. defense industry company (according to their website) has the intelligence to recognize bad
practices and the ability to change them for the better.

Or are we simply destined for years more, as Huffington Post blogger
Charlie Cray put it, of companies and investors milking a “Baghdad Bubble
as a result of the Bush administration's refusal to hold them accountable”?

As the meeting ended, and the muckety-mucks began leaving the Ritz-Carlton
to be chauffered away in their Lincoln Town cars and limousines, we gave
these decision makers another opportunity to take a copy of CorpWatch’s
report, or even to talk to us directly. The vast majority kept their
blinders on and marched resolutely past.

Suddenly we saw General Carl Vuono
(ret.). Vuono is former chief of staff of the U.S. Army, and long-time president of private military
consulting firm MPRI, which is now
also an L-3 subsidiary. Pratap and Marwan rushed to try and speak with him, while a reporter and cameraman from Al-Jazeera English filmed and stood at the ready for the general’s reply. The general didn’t want to
talk, but you can see some of the footage on YouTube. You can also watch Pratap and Marwan describe their experiences on Democracy Now!, where they were interviewed live this morning.

Pratap gave the general a copy of “Outsourcing Intelligence In Iraq” – maybe
he’ll decide to have one of his staffers give it a read. We’d love to
talk, and welcome any dialogue with officials of L-3.

In a recent decision reported in the Guardian, a federal appeals court ruled that Caterpillar Inc. could not be sued over the death of an American peace activist who was crushed under bulldozers sold to the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). The story of Rachel Corrie, the activist who was crushed by a 60-ton Caterpillar D9 Bulldozer in Rafah, Gaza in 2003 while trying to prevent the razing of a Palestinian home by the Israeli army, achieved widespread media attention. Reports of the IDF’s razing of homes in Rafah were issued by numerous human rights watchdog organizations, including Human Rights Watch. Corrie’s family, along with four Palestinian families of victims killed while their houses were bulldozed, began legal proceedings against Caterpillar in 2005 for selling machines to Israel. Lawyers arguing for the families insisted that the company sold the bulldozers to the Israeli government on a commercial basis and knew, or should have known, that they would be used to demolish homes and kill innocent victims in violation of international law.

Explaining its decision, the court claimed that it could not rule in favor of the bereaved families "without implicitly questioning, and even condemning, United States foreign policy towards Israel." Of course, this is not the first time that U.S. companies have been implicated in mass human rights abuse and not had to answer for their participation. Indeed, U.S. companies have been intimately connected to the human rights abuses of regimes throughout modern history. Near the turn of the millennium, pressure from Jewish organizations finally forced the U.S. to begin looking at the use of slave labor by U.S. corporations (and their subsidiaries) in Nazi Germany.

A court case brought against Ford Motor Co. was dismissed, but Ford admitted that its German subsidiary, Ford-Werke AG, used labor at the Buchenwald concentration camp to build vehicles. Other major U.S. corporations that continued to operate in Nazi-occupied Europe and used slave labor include General Motors, Chase Manhattan Bank and JP Morgan. ''There are things that have to be faced up to,'' alleged Elan Steinberg, World Jewish Congress executive director, ''American companies were collaborating with Nazi Germany at a time when we were at war, because there was an ethos that demanded huge profits at the expense of everything else.''

Modern history is peppered with examples of corporations seeking profit during periods of mass human rights abuse: In the 1970s, the U.S. manufacturing giant, ITT, and others helped overthrow democracy and install the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile (to listen to the Nixon Whitehouse tape that acknowledges this relationship visit GWU’s website, The National SecurityArchive). Numerous companies supported South African apartheid, including U.S. giants IBM, General Motors, ExxonMobil, J.P Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Caltex Petroleum Corporation, Ford Motor Company and the Fluor Corporation. In 2002 a group of South Africansunsuccessfully sued 20 banks and corporations that did business in South Africa during apartheid. The list goes on and on.

Even if these corporations are not held accountable for their role in mass human rights abuse and economic activities are allowed to take legal precedence over human rights, it is of vital importance to recognize the role that corporations play in this abuse. It appears to be the responsibility of the public to put pressure on corporations to consider where they do business and with whom.

Robert Young Pelton is the author of "Licensed to
Kill: Hired Guns in the War
on Terror " and the "Guide to the World's Most
Dangerous Places." He is also co-founder of
http://www.iraqslogger.com . This blog item is about his
experiences attending the Congressional hearing into the Blackwater
shootings in Iraq written on October 2nd, 2007.

Standing in line to get into Tuesday's hearing, I found myself in a
strange position. In front of me, dark-suited and staid Blackwater
executives stood waiting to show moral support for their boss, Erik
Prince, while the colorful and animated Pink Ladies behind me ticked
off reasons he and his industry should be feared.

The two extremes represent the bookends of public debate on the
private security industry. The former military men who run Blackwater
view their supporting role in the war on terror as both necessary and
good, while human rights activists believe there is something deeply
wrong with authorizing private citizens to kill other private
citizens.

One of the women waiting in line asked me, "How can we find out what
these people are doing?" I suggested she could go to any
neighborhood in Baghdad and just ask the locals.

Or better yet--spend a week driving through Baghdad in an unmarked car
to see how often convoys blast through intersections, guns bristling
from every door, pointed directly at you, giving you mere seconds to
get out of the way before the bullets start flying. Feel your own
pulse racing as you realize how easily you could have been killed if
you'd had your radio a little louder, or hadn't noticed their
approach, or hadn't swerved to a stop fast enough.

Companies like Blackwater wield a life-and-death power in Iraq,
creating an arrogant misuse of force the United States has put into
civilians hands.

I spent time in Sadr City and other areas interviewing the victims of
Blackwater and other security companies. Terrified Iraqis, many who
did not want to be identified or publicly quoted, told of sudden
unexpected encounters with fast moving convoys of SUVs--then death,
destruction, or permanent life change as family members were crushed,
maimed, killed, or traumatized.

During the time I spent researching my book Licensed to Kill, I
realized there were thousands of stories waiting to be heard about
excessive force being used on civilians in the name of "security".
Not surprisingly, many victims look to a militia to seek some revenge
for the transgression in the form of an ambush or IED.

Security companies are reviled; the Iraqis that work for these
companies have to cover their faces because they know militias or
their neighbors will kill them and or their families.

Military commanders understand that a non-state actor on the
battlefield is a wild card--whether death squad, militia or security
company. Iraqis know that the undermanned military must rely on
contractors to deliver 16 flavors of ice cream, frozen lobster and
bullets to the war effort.

The normally timid State Dept, known more for issuing warnings and
shutting down embassies when things get rough, has decided that its
people must travel the mean streets of Baghdad rather than give in to
intimidation. Security contractors are literally the grease that makes
our forward-leaning foreign policy in Iraq work.

So when Prince pretends like he is defending the US--justifying
violent acts by categorizing it as fighting bad guys--he does it with
the support of the State Department, though to the direct detriment of
the Iraqi civilians those actions terrify and kill.

When Prince testified that his people "acted appropriately at all
times," it made me wonder how many killings he investigated from
the Iraqi viewpoint. He has a blind spot towards the damage he causes
if he thinks that firing a contractor who just murdered someone
somehow fixes the problem. "Window or Aisle" instead of "guilty
or not guilty" does not enforce any accountability

It is no coincidence that BW has been involved in shootouts with the
Iraqi police. They too have seen the destructive force Blackwater has
been authorized to unleash on their citizens.

When Prince rattles off the various legal umbrellas he operates under,
he conveniently ignores that none of his hired guns have been brought
up on any charges for anything-despite clear incidents of
malfeasance. Blackwater itself faces no ill consequence for deploying
unstable men into the war zone.

"Anytime a contractor is abroad, he can be brought up on
charges," is the equivalent of saying speeding is illegal while
cars whip by at 80 mph without a cop in sight.

Blackwater is the personification of war as a business, violence as a
service, and chaos as a product. Prince recognized the lack of
sufficient available US troops and provided a privatized solution. He
cannot be faulted for that.

Any corporate master would take the position, like Prince did in front
of Congress Tuesday, that his people are perfect, his conduct
perfect.

Exposed deceit or corruption at most companies would lead to its own
downfall. If it's a monster like Enron, it could conceivably flutter
Wall Street for a few days.

But the conduct of companies like Blackwater directly impacts US
strategic interests.

The obvious polarization of politicians addressing Prince during the
hearing indicates that Republicans are willing to bless the use of
lethal force by a private individual against the people they are
trying to pacify, while Democrats have yet to quite capture what it is
about the industry that makes people so nervous.

I say again: Go to Iraq. Talk to the people. Drive in an unmarked
car. When an armed convoy pushes you off the road with guns
drawn, you'll understand the naked fear that Blackwater sells.

Billy Rautenbach, a South African mining kingpin, was deported from Lubumbashi airport in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on July 18th. “He was accused of fraud, theft, corruption and violating commercial law [the expulsion document] said. He was persona non grata. He would have to leave,” writes Ben Laurence in the Sunday Times (UK).

Best known in South Africa and Botswana for his activities in assembling Hyundai cars, Rautenbach faces hundreds of charges of fraud, corruption and other crimes in his home country of South Africa (the reasons cited in the documents prepared for his deportation last week). South Africa is currently considering asking Zimbabwe to extradite him to stand trial.

But Rautenbach was also once a powerful man in the DRC. He ran Gecamines, the DRC’s state-owned copper mining company, from 1998 to 2000. At the time he was accused of under-reporting exports of sales of huge quantities of DRC cobalt when he was in charge – and diverting the profits to a company he controlled in the British Virgin Islands.

Although Rautenbach lost his job, he continues to play an important role in the mining sector, as he also happens to be a major shareholder of Central African Mining & Exploration Company (CAMEC), which won major contracts in the DRC a couple of years later.

CAMEC’s contracts were the result of an investor-friendly mining code introduced by the World Bank in July 2002. (An informative analysis of this code was done by the Bank Information Center.) While the code calls for a much-needed regulatory framework and environmental protection, it hands the responsibility for mining development to private companies.

However, it is doubtful that the Congolese public institutions charged with regulating the mining sector have the resources to carry through with it, and the World Bank certainly has not been successful in providing oversight. A memo leaked to the Financial Times in November 2006 details the World Bank’s failure to provide sufficient oversight in three major contracts made between Gecamines and international mining groups like CAMEC. Worth billions of dollars, these contracts reportedly gave these groups control over 75% of Gecamines mineral reserves. (In May 2007, the Financial Times also revealed that the World Bank withheld the findings of an inquiry into alleged mismanagement of funds in the Democratic Republic of Congo.)

More details on the business dealings of Rautenbach and CAMEC may emerge from a DRC commission that recently began a three-month review of mining contracts signed in the last decade. The commission is the first attempt of a new “democratically elected” government to investigate ongoing corruption in the DRC’s valuable mining sector. The new commission follows a string of attempts by previous governments and international financial institutions to investigate the exploitation of natural resources in the DRC.

If the commission hopes to be successful it must take a look at whose interests are being promoted/protected in the Congo and how. This would include an investigation into local elites, regional influences, international financial institutions and the powers they represent, and international corporations along with the relationships between these different actors.

History has shown that the more resources a nation or region possess, the more conflict and poverty the people of that nation are forced to endure. The DRC is the third largest country in Africa and is rich in natural resources, particularly cobalt, copper, diamonds and gold. It is home to one third of the world’s cassiterite, the most important source of the metallic element tin and holds 64-80% of the world’s coltan reserves, an ore that is the source of the metal tantalum, which is used in cell phones and other devices.

In an article for Alternet, Stan Cox quotes a miner responsible for digging the valuable cassiterite: "As you crawl through the tiny hole, using your arms and fingers to scratch, there's not enough space to dig properly and you get badly grazed all over. And then, when you do finally come back out with the cassiterite, the soldiers are waiting to grab it at gunpoint. Which means you have nothing to buy food with. So we're always hungry."
This cassiterite will inevitably end up in cheap cell phones and laptops laying abandoned in American landfills.

Despite (or indeed because of) its abundance of resources, the DRC has been plagued by conflict, famine and political instability since its independence in the 1960s. Following the end of the 30-year dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko (who was brought to power by the U.S. in the 1960s), the greed of neighboring countries for natural resources forced the DRC into the center of what organizations like Human Rights Watch have deemed, “Africa’s first world war.” The war resulted in the death of three to five million people, many from famine, exposure and disease.

A cease-fire ended the war in 1999, but the DRC has continued to suffer the extraction of resources and wealth through corrupt deals between local elites and international companies. A 2006 report from the London-based watchdog organization, Global Witness, describes how copper and cobalt are mined informally and illicitly exported, robbing the Congolese people of any opportunity to reduce poverty.

The new commission’s plan to revisit mining contracts between the state and private companies is a response to years of domestic and international pressure. Hopefully, once the review is completed (assuming that it is a transparent and non-corrupt process), the international companies involved will be willing to re-negotiate contracts in a way that is more beneficial to the Congolese state and its citizens. An interesting precedent was established last year in Liberia when Mittal Steel, the world’s largest steel company, agreed to step down from an unbalanced concessionary agreement made with a corrupt transitional government once a democratically elected government was in place.

Boycotts and sanctions are two key tools that activists and governments use to target corporations who do business with "unsavory" regimes. There is a long history of progressive activists calling for boycotts, for example, against companies doing business in South Africa in the 1980s, Burma and Nigeria in the 1990s, and most recently Sudan in an attempt to topple or change regimes with a history of human rights abuse.

In the old days, activists created boycott flyers to target companies that were wheat-pasted on walls, they picketed stores that sold goods from the offending companies, and most recently many activist groups have created websites created to encourage consumers to vote with their dollars: such as Ethical Consumer in the UK or tools to track companies in specific countries such as the Sudan Divestment Network.

The U.S. government has followed a similar but more heavy-handed tactic to enforce its anger against other governments, by passing laws forbidding companies from doing business in countries ranging from Cuba in the 1960s, South Africa in the 1980s, Iraq in the 1990s and most recently in Syria. (A State Department official suggest that sanctions have been imposed on foreign countries well over 100 times since the First World War.) Of course, unlike activists, the U.S. government has the power to prosecute companies who fail to comply.

Some of the targets of boycotts and sanctions have been one and the same: South Africa being a notable example.

How successful have these boycotts and sanctions been? Activists argue that the South African apartheid regime was felled by such pressure, undertaken in solidarity with local movements, although one might argue that anti-apartheid protests within South Africa itself played an even more significant role. A variety of think-tanks (mostly conservative) have argued that sanctions don't work.

In May, Christopher Dodd, a Democrat from Connecticut and the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, called on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to make it easier for "shareholders to access reliable information regarding publicly traded companies' business transactions involving Iran and Sudan."

The tool generated some odd results: Reuters, the media company, had reported news-gathering activities in Cuba, Iran and Syria, so it made all three lists!

Not surprisingly, the Web tool provoked a storm of protest. "The list was fraught with distortions that could have actually harmed investors instead of informing them," Todd Malan, the president of the Organization for International Investment, which represents such companies, told reporters. "It was basically just a word search with no context, scale or reference."

Barney Frank, a Democrat from Massachusetts, called the list "unfair and perhaps counterproductive." He said some companies "apparently have investments that are so negligible they could not be considered material either to investors or the economy of the terrorist-financing state."

"Our role is to make that information readily accessible to the investing public, and we will continue to work to find better ways to accomplish that objective," says the SEC. We await the results eagerly -- will the SEC try picketing the listed companies or dropping protest banners? If so, we just might know some folks who might be able to help.

Continuing our film recommendations from last
week, we'd like to mention "Total Denial" - a new
documentary on corporate-financed human rights abuses in Burma. The film was
made by Bulgarian-born Milena Kaneva.
The Austin-Chronicle newspaper in Texas called the film:
"heart-wrenching and utterly
disturbing."

"Total Denial"
chronicles a major human rights lawsuit brought by EarthRights
International and villagers from Burma against oil giant Unocal, a
company based right here in California, as well as a French
multinational named Total. A number of screenings are coming up
in the next few weeks here in the U.S.
If you live in the Bay area, do check it out on Thursday, in
Los Angeles on March 27th or in Washington DC on April
11th.

The lawsuit was brought by 11 Burmese peasants who suffered a variety of human
rights violations at the hands of Burmese army units that were
securing the pipeline route. These abuses included forced relocation,
forced labor, rape, torture, and murder.

The case was spearheaded by Ka Hsaw Wa, the executive
director of Earth Rights International, an organization based in
Washington DC. Of the Karen indigenous minority in Burma, he was one of the student leaders in the 1988
nation-wide student uprising for democracy and freedom, and has been a
human rights activist since he fled Burma in 1988. He was helped by
Paul Hoffman of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Hadsell &
Stormer, and Judith Brown Chomsky.

Almost a decade after the case was brought,
the court decided that:

"Unocal knew
that the military had a record of committing human rights abuses; that
the Project hired the military to provide security for the Project, a
military that forced villagers to work and entire villages to relocate
for the benefit of the Project; that the military, while forcing
villagers to work and relocate, committed numerous acts of violence;
and that Unocal knew or should have known that the military did
commit, was committing and would continue to commit these tortious
acts."

The legal basis for the case was a laws called
the Alien Tort Claims Act (a 1789 law intended to curb piracy on the high seas by extending U.S. jurisdiction to cover breaches of international law outside its borders), which has been used
primarily to sue international human rights abuses in U.S. courts. In recent
years a number of plaintiffs have sued multinational corporations for
abuses outside the U.S. under this law. While many of these cases are
now in court, Unocal decided to settle out of court and
compensate the victims in January 2006.

The case is based on two
incidents: the shooting of peaceful protestors at Chevron's Parabe
offshore platform and the destruction of two villages by soldiers in
Chevron helicopters and boats.

Last week U.S. District Judge
Susan Illston in San Francisco agreed
that the Nigerian plaintiffs: "have presented
evidence of a link between the conduct of Chevron in the United States
and the attacks in Nigeria at issue" as well as evidence that the corporation had
substantial control over its Nigerian unit, that it
"designed and adjusted the general security policies and
procedures" of its subsidiary and approved payments from the
subsidiary to the Nigerian government security
forces.

The particular abuses at issue
are the November 10, 1995 hangings of Ken Saro-Wiwa and John Kpuinen,
two leaders of MOSOP (Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People),
the torture and detention of Owens Wiwa, and the shooting of a woman
who was peacefully protesting the bulldozing of her crops in
preparation for a Shell pipeline by Nigerian troops called in by
Shell.

This week's CorpWatch feature highlights the plight of indigenous people in Papua New Guinea, where landowners feel that they are cheated out of their resources, livelihoods, and just compensation by the world's largest gold producer, Barrick Gold.

We depend on our land. You depend on money. Money is not need, it is only a want, but it is need in western society. I live on land, which is my stomach. I grow food from this land and then I survive. But now, where can I get food?

Also, the fact that mineral deposits, including oil, copper, and gold, account for two-thirds of PNG's export earnings leaves them susceptible to the Dutch Disease, or the phenomenon wherein resource exports raise the exchange rate for a country's currency, thereby making their labor less desirable. While this only accounts for a tiny part of the negative consequences of mining, it does illustrate that even within an economic paradigm, mining carries negative consequences for 'development', especially open pit mines because they require less human labor. Large mineral exports also make countries more susceptible to corruption because of the negotiating power held with government gatekeepers.

"There is not sufficient disclosure in an
understandable form for citizens or civic groups to determine whether
they are indeed benefiting as they should according to current law in
Mali."

The fact that gold is a largely useless metal (that is already hoarded and unused in large quantities) makes the destruction caused by it's extraction all the more tragic. According the No Dirty Gold Campaign, 80% of the gold is used by the jewelry industry. On average, the production of one gold wedding ring produces 20 tons of waste.

Metal prices are booming, and Canadian mining companies are taking advantage of the same prejudicial conditions to expand into all corners of the globe, manipulating, slandering, abusing, and even killing those who dare to oppose them, displacing Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities alike, supporting repressive governments and taking advantage of weak ones, and contaminating and destroying sensitive ecosystems.

Barrick's plans to "relocate" three glaciers - 816,000 cubic meters of ice - by means of bulldozers and controlled blasting, is seen by mine-opponents as symbolic of the company's utter insensitivity to the environment. As headwaters for a water basin in an arid region receiving very little rainfall, many opponents are gravely concerned for the ice. They say the mechanical action involved in moving the glaciers will irreversibly melt much of it, jeopardizing a delicate ecological balance further downstream.

While Barrick originally planned to "relocate" three glaciers to another area, since being denied their original plan, the project now aims to build an open-pit mine next to the glaciers. However, most alarmingly, since construction has started on the mine, the glaciers have been depleted an estimated 50-70 percent, according to Chilean General Office of Waters (DGA). Barrick attempted to blame global warming for the melting, but those claims have been disproven.

Mining in the U.S.

In the U.S., Western Shoshone lands now account for the majority of gold produced within the United States and almost 10 percent of world production. The scale of development is unprecedented and will leave a legacy of environmental impacts for centuries into the future.